82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There is a South American river name written in our English 

 idiom Amaccura. In Florida we have the old aboriginal title 

 Amaxura. No man is now learned enough to maintain, with any 

 assurance of truth or authority in his favor, that from either 

 standpoint, historical or etymological, there is any real or essen- 

 tial difference in the two names. 



The same thing may be said of two other well-known ancient 

 "Indian" appellations Orinoco and Oronoko, as they are now 

 written in our English versions. The former is a native South 

 American word, while the latter Oronoko is unquestionably an 

 aboriginal North American river name. A corruption of the an- 

 cient name has been applied, as the permanent modern title of the 

 stream, in the word written Roanoke, the old initial vowel sound 

 in o finally dropped. Our wisest philologists are unable to deter- 

 mine any difference in the true etymology of the two writings, 

 Orinoco and Oronoko. 



Nor can they perceive the real difference for none exists in 

 the Carolina river name Occonee and the South American appella- 

 tion written Ocona. We have in North America the name Paw- 

 nee ; in South America they have what is doubtless the very same 

 thing in the writing Pana (Pawna). We have in New England 

 the native name Chicopee ; South America has Chicapa. (Our au- 

 thorities tell us that " oopee," " upa," " opee," " ippe," " epe/' " apa," 

 etc., are simply dialectic expressions showing one common ances- 

 try each being a term for water or river in the native tongues of 

 the continent.) We have Omalia ; South America has Omagha. 

 We have Aboite ; South America has Abaite. We have in South 

 Carolina the river name Saluda ; South America has the Salado- 

 rio, the Sal-aw-dow River. We have Tygar River ; South Amer- 

 ica has Tigri. (The Old World has the name written in English 

 Tigris really Te-ga-ri, or the De-ka-li of the Hebrew ; all three 

 of the names Tygar, Tigri, and Tigris showing a common 

 though very remote ancestry.) 



Chico and Chota are found in native names in both North and 

 South America. We have Choco and Choccolocco ; while South 

 America has Choco-loochee. "Loochees" and "oochees," or 

 " uchas," without number, are found all over the continent, North 

 as well as South, in the native names of waters. In South Amer- 

 ica are several Ubas, ancient appellations of waters. California 

 has two rivers, the prehistoric Indian names, written Yuba. There 

 are scores of " oobas " and " ubas " in the ancient names of waters 

 of the continent both North and South. And what is a more 

 startling feature of the prehistoric speech of the New World is 

 the fact that this same word, or the sounds heard in the writing 

 " uba " or " yuba," is found in the prehistoric water nomenclature 

 of various peoples of the Old World. 



